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Unions leaders say they're not backing down in negotiations with the city
Bargaining teams from the city's two municipal unions met with city negotiators yesterday, 10 days after union contracts expired, to begin hashing out new agreements.
The talks focused initially on healthcare.
"We're looking to change the entire funding structure [on healthcare]," lead city negotiator Shannon Farmer said after a two-hour morning meeting with blue-collar union DC 33, during which each party spent most of the time in separate caucuses.
Most of a roughly two-hour afternoon meeting with white-collar union DC 47 was spent at the bargaining table. Farmer said the city proposed a similar financial restructuring for that union.
The Nutter administration has requested that both unions accept concessions to the tune of $125 million over the next five years to cope with the budget shortfall.
After yesterday's negotiations, however, union leaders said they had no plans to back down.
"For the city to say they're going to take what we already have, we're not going to allow it," DC 33 leader Pete Matthews said, adding that he has yet to review the city's proposal. "We've been more than fair."
After DC 47's meeting, union leader Cathy Scott expressed disappointment that despite her union's request for a list detailing city savings for each concession, bargaining team members saw nothing of the kind.
"I think we are moving in the wrong direction. We're going backwards instead of forward," Scott said. "To be coming in on July 10, 10 days after our contract expired, is very problematic."
Both leaders indicated that the unions were not preparing for strike votes at this time. *
